From: Jason Resch
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 1:13 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Maudlin & How many times does COMP have to be false before its
false?
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 2/13/2011 5:21 AM, 1Z wrote:
On Feb 12, 3:18 am, Brent Meeker<meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
What do you think the chances are that any random object in
Plato's heaven, or any random Turing machine will support
intelligent life?
1 in 10, 1 in 1000, 1 in a billion?
Zero.
Does that allow us to argue:
1) A universe selected from an uncountably infinite number of
possibilities has measure
0
2) Our universe exists so it has measure>0
3) Our universe is not selected from uncountably infinite
possibilities
4) MUH indicates any universe must be selected from uncountable
infinite possibilities (since all
of maths includes the real line, etc)
5) MUH is false.
Hmmm. I think we argue that objects in Plato's heaven and Turing machines
are not the right kind of things to support life.
>I am very puzzled by this statement. You could help me understand by
>answering the following questions:
>Why couldn't there be an accurate simulation of life on a Turing machine?
>How can entities within a universe that exists in Plato's heaven distinguish
>it from a universe that does not?
[SPK]
Don’t we need to be able to define exactly what Life is first, in order to
know whether or not it is Turing Emulable? AFAIK there is no agreed upon
definition of life and the folks that believe that Life is Turing emulable seem
to do so as a act of faith, given that there is no evidence at all that such is
possible or impossible. Additionally, the existence of the Platonic realm
cannot be established by empirical means nor logical necessity even if some
famous people wrote papers about it, its existence is mere conjecture. Thus it
too is believed as an act of faith. There has not be a resolution to the debate
between nominalism and universals that I know of, so the jury is still out on
even the objective existence of numbers.
I grew up among people with faith like that, except they believed in a God
that would condemn mankind to an existence in a lake of fire for not accepting
blah blah ... until I realized that it was all a power game to control my mind.
Thus am very leery of beliefs that cannot be justified by either empirical
evidence or logical necessity or some combination of the two.
One can tentatively accept the existence of some entity for the sake of an
argument and see what the implications are, but to base one’s ontology on such
without very careful deliberation is to engage in the same kind of
irrationality that we disdain religions fanatics for. I have been holding back
on expressing this thought here, but seriously, we need to step back and
reconsider what we are taking for granted in our “reasonings”.
I must admit this because I have been advocating for a form of dualism that
would claim that numbers and even information has an objective existence of
sorts but this dualism is not so bold as the dualism that is inherent in the
belief in Platonia. The Platonic realm is obviously not a physical place and
thus has to be considered as separate from our world of experience. Roger
Penrose seems to be the only person to be up front about this aspect of
Platonism and he got his books panned for his honest attempt to defend his
claims.
Onward!
Stephen
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